16. Bickering to warm the soul
BICKERING TO WARM THE SOUL
ENORA
Amoment of peace was too much to ask for in Grimm’s Keep.
I’d walked as fast as my legs would take me through the depressing nytefire-lit halls, praying I remembered my way back and staunchly ignoring the curious looks I received.
Despite taking those corridors and stairwells with as much urgency as I could, an all-too-familiar buzzing caught up with me just as I’d finally caught sight of the doors I wanted to disappear behind.
“Princess, wait!” came a tiny squeak.
“I’m not in the mood tonight, Eilir,” I called back. “Sorry!”
A curse and another apology tumbled out of me a breath later as I stumbled to sidestep a guard coming around the corner of an offshoot hallway, walking as fast as I was.
He tossed me an apologetic wince and kept on his burning path, but it gave just enough time for that fucking buzzing to catch up with me.
Eilir flew right in front of my face, hands planted on their hips.
“What did he do?” they asked with a frown. “I could feel anger brewing off you all the way down in Jasper’s crypt! It was like a beacon.”
“It was nothing,” I sighed. I really didn’t want to get into it and have to relive that abomination of a dinner again. “Did you say you could feel my anger in…wherever you were?”
Eilir nodded. “Of course I could. You give off a lot of potent feelings, princess, but that was foul energy.” The way they said it made it seem like that was a normal topic of conversation.
“Okay,” I drawled. “But you couldn’t feel Maksym’s anger?”
That, I found hard to believe, unless his entire performance had been nothing but that—a charade meant to rile me for a reason I couldn’t fathom. Add that to the growing list of things that made absolutely no sense about my future husband.
Eilir smiled. “No, no. He knows how to shield such things. You will too one day, I’m sure; otherwise, half the kingdom will always know how you feel!”
Fucking wonderful.
“This place just keeps getting better and better,” I muttered as I stepped around the sprite’s fluttering wings and continued down the hall. My room was so damned close, but Eilir was right on my tail.
“Mhm. So, clearly, he didn’t do nothing,” they chirped from beside me. “Did he not like your pants? Or…or your hair? He’s not great with compliments.”
“I wish that were the problem.” I scrubbed my fingers over my forehead and added, “Your king is a right asshole, and I really don’t feel like talking about it anymore than that.”
The sprite tutted a chiding noise. “Not my king, princess.”
I waved my hand. “Whatever he is to you. I don’t care.
He’s an ass in every regard. I can’t fathom how he runs this kingdom with social skills like that.
How can he handle courtiers and their incessant bickering when he can’t even have a single civil dinner with his future wife?
You know, I didn’t even get to ask him about his stupid book like you told me to. ”
“Oh dear,” Eilir sighed.
Shockingly, they said nothing else.
Quiet persisted as we cleared the last paces of the hall, but any hope I had of being alone withered when I opened my bedroom door, and Eilir zipped in past me.
Clearly, someone had been in already, because a blue flame was roaring in the hearth, all my drapes were shut, and there wasn’t a single linen, article of clothing, or trinket discarded in a hurry.
“He was an awkward child, you know? And he spent a lot of his life alone, not knowing who to trust,” they said just after I turned over the lock.
“Okay.” I fought off my vest and draped it over the vanity chair, then toed off my boots beside it. A slight battle with the laces of my pants came next. “But he’s not a child anymore, and is leading an entire kingdom, so…?”
Eilir tossed me a frown before they flew to my bed and started pulling back the covers.
“You don’t have to do that,” I bit out quickly, hurrying over, but Eilir shooed me away and turned back to their task.
“All I mean,” they said slowly, “is that he forgets himself sometimes, I think. Forgets that he’s not alone anymore. Forgets he has people he can trust. His imprisonment was an act of cruelty, and his exile did little to repair what he had endured.”
At Eilir’s insistent patting, I took a seat on the mattress and sank back against the thoroughly plumped pillows, slipping my legs under the silky-soft, turned-down covers. Finally, something that brokered no complaints.
“He was imprisoned?” I asked. “Why?”
I’d heard mention of his exile a few times now.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to broach its subject with how Maksym had fired it at me after dinner, but I’d yet to hear anything about an imprisonment.
Not that I knew much outside of the scant facts Eilir liked to sprinkle on me, because King Dearest clearly had no interest in telling me about himself.
The sprite frowned as they rolled up my duvet. “Uprising, the first time. Illegal trade and a plethora of other things the second time. Nasty, nasty place, the jail in Embervale. Most of what goes in there rarely makes it out. Not intact, at least.”
I winced, but I couldn’t stifle the yawn it rolled into.
That had nothing to do with what Eilir had just told me either—Maksym’s imprisonment wasn’t shocking, but it was still interesting.
I just couldn’t help the fatigue pulling me back into the pillows.
Between the stress I just wasn’t used to and all my body had gone through, it was hard to deny how much of a waif-like damsel I felt like. A terrifying first in my life.
“And why did he end up being exiled?” I asked with another half-yawn. With a chuckle, I added, “Didn’t exactly have time to ask him about that at dinner when he spat it at me like it was a weapon.”
“Callum was an exceptionally cruel king,” Eilir said as, bless their tiny little wooden soul, they helped pull my covers up the rest of the way.
“And he was a coward in equal measure. He feared his only child so much, he got rid of him, banished Max to exile in the Wastes and re-warded the entire kingdom against descendants of his own blood.”
“That seems a little extreme,” I mumbled. “What’s so special about Max that his father would be afraid of him? He’s so…skinny. Does he have m-ma—”
A mote of shimmery dust floated through my vision.
I blinked twice, hard.
The glittering dust increased tenfold.
It coated my linens and hands, and when I glanced over at Eilir, the sprite was wearing a grimace, baring all their sharp teeth.
“Eilir…” I said slowly, but even the single word felt like a chore. “What did you…?”
“I’m sorry!” they squeaked. “Max was adamant you get plenty of sleep. They’re both very worried about you, you know?”
“Both?” I rasped.
If Eilir had answered me, I didn’t know, because my eyes slipped shut, plunging me into an utterly blissful darkness.
I hadn’t ever known sleep to feel like the best hug I’d ever experienced—maybe not consciously, at least—but it wrapped its warm, intangible limbs tightly around me and pulled me deeper and deeper into—
“PRINCESS! GET UP!”
My eyes flew open, and I shot upright as daylight and the furious buzzing of Eilir’s wings accosted me, my heart thundering in my chest.
“What the fuck?” I croaked as I rubbed my eyes and looked around.
Despite my half-assed attempt, I was having a remarkably hard time figuring out what the hell was going on. I could’ve sworn I’d only just closed my eyes, and I was still in bed, but it was no longer night. If the ache in my neck was anything to go by, I had a suspicion I hadn’t moved in hours.
“Get up, get up!” came Eilir’s squawk again as their branchy fingers wrapped around my wrist and tugged at me.
I tried to yank my arm back and ease back into bed. “Good goddess, what is going on? Are we under siege?”
Eilir did not appreciate my humor. They planted their hands on their hips and scoffed. “No, princess. We are not under siege. But Jasper will be here any minute to fetch you to start your training, and, clearly, you’ve forgotten that is very important.”
Oh, fuck.
All the bed linens nearly came to the floor with me as I clambered out of bed. My legs did me no favors as I stumbled to the vanity and then to the chairs by the fire, hunting for where in the hell I had abandoned my pants and my vest the night before.
“Oh, now she gets moving,” Eilir scoffed from somewhere behind me.
“Oh, don’t you oh me, sprite,” I shot back. “Not after you did…whatever the hell it was you did to me last night.”
“I had orders!”
“I had orders,” I grumbled under my breath as I retrieved my pants from the floor by the fireplace and fought to hop into them. “So does this mean that any time Maksym tells you to do something to me, you’re just going to do it, my wants be damned?”
“Princess,” Eilir whined. “You needed your rest! I had only your best interests in mind, I promise! I would do nothing untoward, I swear on my life.”
Sidestepping the buzzing gnat, I shook my head as I went for the wardrobe. “Well, thank goodness for that,” I scoffed. “I feel so much better knowing you only sedated me without telling me because it was in my best interest, as determined not by me.”
Eilir huffed a clearly annoyed breath but left me to root through the sparse articles of clothing stocked in my room. I needed to find something a little more appropriate than a ruffled blouse to wear for a day of training.
My options were slim but manageable.
I opted for a simple black tunic with a bit of room to it and ignored Eilir’s protesting sputter as I tugged my dressy blouse over my head and traded it for the black one.
It was far from perfect training layers, but I was going to work with what I had.
Given how dinner had gone, today didn’t seem like the best time to surface the topic of new clothing and allowances with my cantankerous soon-to-be spouse.
I was sure it would devolve into him accusing me of something ridiculous again, or making remarks about my attitude, and I wasn’t keen to have a repeat.